


Cursed

by pterawaters



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, Curses, Getting Together, Multi, Season/Series 01, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27453583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pterawaters/pseuds/pterawaters
Summary: Jonathan Byers has known for a long time that he's cursed to cause the death of his soulmate soon after touching them for the first time. He's angry and bitter about this state of affairs, but he keeps to himself as much as he can, terrified of causing someone's death. When his brother goes missing and he starts growing closer to Nancy, who's already realized her soulmate is Steve Harrington, accidentally killing her is the last thought on his mind. Until it happens.
Relationships: Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler
Comments: 9
Kudos: 70
Collections: Stranger Things Rare Pair Big Bang 2020





	Cursed

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the [Stranger Things Rare Pair Big Bang](https://st-rarepairbang.tumblr.com/)! It's based on [a trope mashup post](https://pterawaters.tumblr.com/post/615173573044322304/for-the-mash-up-prompt-stoncy-soulmate-au) prompted by [Whookami](https://whookami.tumblr.com/) way back in April!
> 
> The incredible art was done by [wolfish willow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfish_willow/pseuds/wolfish_willow). Thanks so much!!
> 
> Also, big thanks to my beta reader, [Azure_Lynx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azure_Lynx/pseuds/Azure_Lynx)!
> 
> Trigger warnings: suffocation and loss of consciousness

"Oh, look!" Joyce said, grabbing Lonnie's hand and tugging him through the fairground. Jonathan was ten months old and strapped to her chest, gnawing on the front edge of his carrier with teething gums. "There's a fortune teller."

Lonnie scoffed, saying, "Those frauds are just a waste of money."

"Like the carnival games _aren't_?" Joyce laughed and patted Jonathan's head. "Come on. It'll be fun!"

Grumbling, Lonnie followed his wife and his son to the fortune teller's line. Eventually smiling a little at the noises Jonathan made, Lonnie gave the baby one of his fingers, letting Jonathan clutch it. When Jonathan tried to bring Lonnie's finger to his mouth, however, Lonnie lost his patience and pulled away.

It didn't take long to get to the front of the line. When it was their turn, Lonnie gave the attendant several of their remaining tickets, and then they stepped through the dark curtains surrounding the fortune teller's booth. 

Inside, the walls were draped with thick velvet in purples, pinks, and reds. There was a small round table in the center of the space, draped with a dark blue cloth. A lamp hung over the table, illuminating the table, as well as the fortune teller's hands and bangle-decorated wrists. Her face was more difficult to see, but as Joyce sat down on the stool next to the table, her eyes adjusted. The woman was only a little older than she was, but was wearing heavy makeup and a beaded scarf over her hair.

"Welcome," the woman said. "Welcome. Please sit, sir."

Lonnie rolled his eyes again, but sat on the stool next to Joyce's. 

The woman smiled at Jonathan before asking, "What question would you like to ask the spirits, my dears?"

Joyce shook her head, looking over at Lonnie, who shrugged.

"Perhaps, when you'll meet your soulmates?" She asked, taking a deck of cards from the side of the table and shuffling them. 

Joyce frowned. "How do you know we're not--"

"Maybe what the future holds for the little mister here?" she asked.

Clearing his throat, Lonnie said, "Yeah. That. What's in store for the little booger?"

The fortune teller finished shuffling her cards and held them to her chest for a moment as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then, her eyes still closed, she laid down the first card and took a sharp breath. "Oh! Oh, the poor dear!"

"What?" Joyce asked, watching carefully as the fortune teller set down another card and opened her eyes. "What's going to happen to Jonathan?"

The fortune teller bit her lips and laid down another card. She shook her head. "I've never seen something like this."

Lonnie scoffed. Getting up, he said, "This is bull. I'm done."

He grabbed Joyce's arm, but she shooed him away, saying, "Fine, go. I want to hear this."

After Lonnie left, the fortune teller looked Joyce right in the eye and said, "Listen to me very carefully."

Joyce nodded.

"Your boy has been cursed." She held up a hand to keep Joyce from asking questions. "I don't know who has done this, or why. Perhaps," she looked at the flap Lonnie had gone through when he left, "as redress for old grievances. In any case, you need to be warned." She pointed to the first of the cards. "When Jonathan first touches his soulmate, it will be only minutes before the soulmate's death."

Joyce took a sharp breath of surprise. "What? So he'll never…?"

Shaking her head, the fortune teller reached across the table to put her hand over Joyce's. "You have to make sure he knows. If you don't tell him, the shock of seeing his soulmate's death might kill him."

"Will he ever be happy?" Joyce asked, putting her other hand over the fortune teller's.

She looked at the baby and smiled at him. "I think so. If you prepare him for the disappointment. He'll learn how to be happy. Eventually."

"Okay," Joyce said with a determined nod. "Thank you."

"Oh, and," as she let go of Joyce's hand, she narrowed her eyes at the exit again. "You'll find your actual soulmate in time. Don't expect too much out of that one."

Joyce almost felt insulted. Sure, Lonnie wasn't her soulmate, but he was her husband. Plenty of people had wonderful, lasting marriages with people who weren't their soulmate. Well, she wasn't sure how many of them got married because a "harmless" fling turned into a beautiful baby, but it happened all the time, right? "We'll be fine," she assured the fortune teller, giving her one final nod, and then leaving.

Once she was outside the fortune teller's booth, it took Joyce a few moments to track down Lonnie again. He was buying a beer from the refreshment stall when she caught up with him. After taking a long sip, he asked, "So, what's the verdict? Is our son going to become a millionaire?"

"Not exactly," Joyce said, sensing that she needed to keep what the fortune teller had said from Lonnie. Joyce settled on a half-truth, telling him, "She just said he's never going to meet his soulmate. Not in this life."

Lonnie shrugged. "Could be worse. That soulmate shit is all stupid mumbo jumbo, anyway. Isn't it, babe?" He put his arm around Joyce's shoulders and kissed her hair. Jonathan kicked happily in his carrier, making little baby noises.

"Yeah," Joyce replied, forcing herself to laugh. God, how was she going to tell Jonathan about the curse? And _when_?

Ever since she could remember, Nancy had been cataloging which of her classmates she'd ever touched, and which she hadn't. It seemed important to make sure she didn't miss finding her soulmate. As tragic as they were, the stories where the main character never found their soulmate didn't seem nearly as tragic as those in which the characters didn't notice the Marking Touch when it came.

By freshman year, she'd touched almost all of the girls in her grade, and many of the boys. She had yet to develop any marks indicating she'd met her soulmate. She had a few freckles, but her mom assured her they looked nothing like a soul mark. On several occasions, Nancy _almost_ got up the courage to ask to see her mother's soulmark. She hadn't quite yet. Karen was _very_ sensitive about the mark she kept covered at all times. Karen's sister, Aunt Dorothy, said it was because Karen's soulmate had died during the Vietnam war. 

Sometimes Nancy wanted to ask if her mom's soulmate was her real father, because Ted seemed just so _alien_ to Nancy, all the time. It was like he never thought about anything, while Nancy's brain was thinking of at least three things at any one time. How could he just be so _calm_ and so _still_?

Then again, Mike looked almost exactly like Ted's sister, and he was always running at top speed, just like Nancy. Maybe they both got it from their mom. Karen was calm most of the time, but Nancy could see the way she thought about things, and the sparkle it put in her eye.

One day during Nancy's freshman year of high school, a new person brushed against her arm with his, skin-on-skin, pushing past her with a quick, "Sorry," as he joined his friends, laughing and joking with them. Nancy knew his name was Steve Harrington, and he was in the class ahead of hers, but she didn't really know anything else, besides the fact that he was fairly popular. She added him to her mental list and went to class.

Five minutes later, as class was starting, Nancy felt an itch on the inside of her left wrist, under the band of her watch. Still paying attention to the teacher, Nancy absent-mindedly loosened her watch and scratched under it with the nails of her right hand. When she looked down to refasten her watch, she realized there was a new mark on her wrist!

It looked a lot like three small moles, blended together at their edges to make one contiguous shape. 

Holy shit, it was a soulmark, wasn't it?

The only new person she'd touched since… well, since Mrs. Gladstone last week was Steve Harrington. Her soulmate was Steve Harrington? She didn't know him well enough to figure whether she should be happy about this news or not.

What would happen if she told him? They would have to start dating, right?

Nancy wasn't sure she was _ready_ to start dating. She felt like she still needed time to figure out who _she_ was before she could start dating _anyone_ , much less her soulmate. If they started dating, that would be _it_. That would be her life, until one or the other of them died. It seemed too final to Nancy. Too weighty.

She buckled her watch back on and decided not to say anything. If Steve approached her, she'd figure it out then.

"What is that?" Steve's mother asked him at dinner one evening.

Looking at the inside of his left wrist and the mole (or moles, he supposed) there, Steve shrugged. "More moles, I guess." He had them dotted down his arms, across his chest and back, a few on his face, and even some on his legs and feet. 

“Hmm,” she said, taking his arm and angling it so she could get a better look. “Nice, even borders. Doesn’t look like a melanoma.” She looked at him over her glasses. “Have you been wearing your sunscreen?”

“Yes,” Steve insisted, pulling his arm back and rolling his eyes. Sometimes it sucked having a dermatologist as a mom. It didn’t suck nearly as bad as having a plastic surgeon for a dad. There had been a lot of comments lately about “fixing” Steve’s nose, even though he was sure he was still growing into it.

His mother said, “Good. Keep it up. You don’t want to wrinkle earlier than necessary.”

“Yes, Mother,” Steve said with a put-upon sigh, going back to his dinner. His parents started talking about hospital politics, and barely acknowledged him when he asked to be excused. 

Even though it was a warm spring day, Jonathan pulled on an oversized long-sleeve shirt. Now that he was fifteen, he was starting to question the assumption that his mother was right, and that his Marking Touch would kill his soulmate. Maybe Lonnie was right, and it was just a silly story told by a hack fortune teller looking to make a few bucks at his mother's expense. But then he thought about how _guilty_ he would feel if he caused his soulmate's death, and redoubled his dedication to avoiding that fate.

Whenever he could help it, Jonathan avoided touching other people. If he missed out on his soulmate, then so be it. It wasn't like having a soulmate meant automatic happiness. Lonnie had found his soulmate when Jonathan was ten years old, and he left his wife and two sons without a second thought. Not that his loss was all that great. Lonnie hadn't ever been invested in the family the way it was obvious to Jonathan that Joyce was. His mother did everything for him and his brother. She always told them the truth, too, even when that truth was hard. Lonnie told lies like breathing.

So, why wouldn't Jonathan believe his mother when she told him he was cursed and that his Marking Touch would kill his soulmate? She held herself up as someone who was happy and successful without a soulmate, but at fifteen, Jonathan was beginning to see that maybe she wasn't as happy as she always claimed to be. If she was lying to him about being happy, logic dictated that she could be lying about his soulmate, too.

Jonathan couldn't figure out why she _would_ do that to him. The best he could figure was that she _did_ believe it. And Jonathan was inclined to believe that she believed it. He wasn't sure he believed it, but he wasn't about to go testing it out either.

It was just…

Sometimes he watched movies with his mom and his brother, and two characters found each other as soulmates, and everything was happy and nothing was wrong, and Jonathan's heart _hurt_. He'd been mourning his soulmate his whole life, and he didn't even know who they were. At times like that, Jonathan left the room and threw himself into reading something appropriately angst-ridden and distracting. If his family noticed the connection between the subject matter and when Jonathan left the room to be alone, they didn't say anything. At least not to him.

To make matters worse, Jonathan had started _noticing_ his classmates. He noticed girls and he noticed boys and he _wanted_ and yet…

Any of the people Jonathan found himself drawn to, he also didn't want to be responsible for killing them. Especially since everyone he noticed seemed to have such a good future in store for them. How could Jonathan take that away, just for the momentary thrill that might be a hug, or a kiss, or a brush of fingers?

And yet…

Jonathan was glad that summer was coming up. He'd started applying for jobs around town. He'd been offered one at the movie theater, and while he liked movies, and thought it would be an interesting job, it also meant seeing people out on dates _all the time_.

Which was why, after school, Jonathan was planning to stop by the hardware store and apply for the job they were advertising in the window. 

There shouldn't be anyone going on dates to the hardware store. Just a lot of people wanting to get projects done. He figured he might spend a lot of time alone, stocking shelves, too, and that was good. He didn't want to work with someone else, especially not someone around his age. If he accidentally touched them, and they turned out to be his soulmate?

It was too terrible to think about, so Jonathan just… didn't.

He let the kids at school make fun of him for wearing long clothes and never talking to anybody. It didn't matter. They didn't matter. Not in the long run. Even if one of them _was_ his soulmate. 

Nancy sat in the lunchroom next to her friends, having accidentally sat down in a seat that gave her a perfect view of Steve Harrington and his girlfriend of the week, Becky Richards. Nancy had known Steve was her soulmate for almost a year now and in the beginning, not telling him was fine. She didn't know him, and he didn't know her, and the soulmate thing was something Nancy was going to worry about in the future.

But it had been a year, and Nancy was getting tired of trying to avoid Steve. It seemed like he was always _there_ , even though they didn't have any classes together. Part of the problem was that they were both on student government this year. Steve was junior class president, and Nancy was sophomore class treasurer. She hadn't even wanted the job, _really_. She only went out for it because she needed more extracurriculars on her resume, and treasurer seemed attainable. The popular kids weren't exactly the ones who liked math, so getting elected treasurer wasn't so much a popularity contest as it was just making sure everyone knew her name before they voted. Her only competition had been Joshua Brown, who was notoriously bad at math. Even highschool sophomores knew better than to elect him treasurer.

Barb leaned closer to Nancy and said, "If it bothers you so much, you should just tell him."

"Yeah, I know," Nancy said, but there was rehearsing what she was going to say to Steve in her head, and then there was actually _doing_ it. He was _always_ surrounded by his friends, and his girlfriends, and their friends. How was she supposed to get him alone for long enough to tell him that she had a soulmate mark because of him? 

It wasn't like she could just show up at his house. Right?

The opportunity presented itself about a month later. Steve and Becky had broken up, over something or other insignificant, and Nancy saw him at the other end of the cereal aisle at the grocery store. Deciding in a split second that she was done waiting, Nancy headed toward him, unfastening her watch and slipping it off her wrist.

"Steve," she said as she approached him, going suddenly wordless when he looked up and met her eyes. 

Setting a box of cereal back on the shelf, he said, "Yeah? Nancy, right?"

"Right," she replied, a little less nervous now that he'd proven he knew her name. Maybe this wasn't the worst idea. Still, she prefaced her speech by saying, "So, I might be wrong about this, but I think we might have matching marks."

She held out her wrist to him, where he could see it.

Frowning, Steve put his own wrist next to hers.

There was a mark there, just like Nancy thought there would be, and it matched hers exactly.

"Oh, wow," Steve said, looking up and meeting Nancy's eyes. "I didn't know. When did this happen? I can't remember when I first noticed it."

"It was a while ago," Nancy told him, wrapping her arms around herself. "You had a girlfriend then and I didn't want to…"

Steve gave a soft laugh, lifting his hand to scratch at the back of his neck. "Yeah, I just sort of assumed I didn't have a soulmate yet. Figured I'd have some fun while I was waiting." His cheeks looked a little pink. "Sorry."

Nancy found herself smiling and shaking her head at him. Just the fact that someone like Steve had the capacity to feel embarrassed made him seem that much more human. Maybe she'd built this up in her head more than she'd needed to. Feeling like she needed to tease him a little bit, maybe keep his famous ego in check, Nancy said, "Well, I think I know how you can make it up to me."

"Yeah?" Steve asked, a smile creeping onto his lips as well. "How's that?"

"Take me to dinner tonight?"

Steve laughed and nodded. "Yeah, okay. Sure. I can do dinner. Where should I pick you up?"

Pulling a pen out of her purse, Nancy took Steve's left hand in hers and turned it over. She wrote her phone number on his skin, followed by her address. "I'll see you at six?"

Grinning broadly now, Steve clasped Nancy's hand and nodded. "Six it is. I'll see you then, Nancy Wheeler."

The way he said her whole name made Nancy feel warm, like she was blushing now. "See you then, Steve Harrington," she replied. 

When she returned to her mother, she was still grinning.

Karen asked, "What's gotten into you, Nancy?"

She'd been holding in the news about finding her soulmate so long that she almost demurred and made up a lie. But, she didn't have to do that anymore. Steve knew now. He seemed happy about being her soulmate, not disappointed or anything. Yeah, this was going to be a good thing.

Still smiling, Nancy held her wrist out to her mother and said, "I found my soulmate."

"Oh!" Karen cried, taking Nancy's hand gently and looking closer at the mark on her wrist. "What an interesting shape." She let go of Nancy and asked, "Who is it?"

"Steve Harrington," Nancy told her. "He's a year ahead of me in school."

Karen bit her lower lip and her eyes looked a little shiny. "He's from a good family?" she asked, holding onto Nancy's shoulders.

Nancy nodded. "I think I heard somewhere that his parents are both doctors. I'm going out to dinner with him tonight."

Sniffling a little, Karen nodded and pulled Nancy into a hug.

"Mom?" Nancy asked, hugging her mom back. "Are you okay?"

Karen sniffled slightly and released Nancy, saying, "Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay. I'm happy for you."

Nancy thought her mother looked too much in pain to be happy, but she didn't press the matter. She gave her mother a soft, "Thanks," before asking, "What do we have left to get?"

Clearing her throat, Karen handed Nancy the shopping list. "Why don't you tell me?"

With a smile, Nancy read off the next item on the list. 

She spotted Steve once more before they left the store, standing in line with the woman who had to be his mother. She was dark-haired, and really pretty, and it boggled her mind that at some point in the not too distant future, she would probably be like family to Nancy. That idea felt strange to her. She figured she'd been so focused on figuring out _who_ her soulmate was, and then on taking time to figure out who she was without Steve, that she hadn't ever stopped to think about what would happen after she told him.

Steve was nervous when he pulled up to Nancy’s house to pick her up for their date. Sure, he’d been on a bunch of dates before, but never with his _soulmate_. He hadn’t even told his parents what was so different about this date, and why he’d spent so much time picking out the right clothes and doing his hair. With those other girls before, it had never really mattered. He’d wanted them to like him, but his main goal had been fun, maybe a little relief from his hormones. 

He’d never needed the girl to fall in epic, transcendent _love_ with him before. He knew it was supposed to be easier with your soulmate, that you should fit together like two halves of a whole, but still… Steve knew he could be kind of a dick sometimes. He tried not to be, really, but sometimes he found himself parroting something his asshole dad would say, or something Tommy would say, and he wasn’t sure _why_ he did that. 

As far as he knew, Nancy was a nice girl. But he had… well, he’d noticed her during student government meetings. Whenever Wes Beckham, the senior class president, said anything, Nancy clenched her jaw and there was this set of her shoulders that Steve knew, instinctually, was dangerous. She looked like she could tear a person to pieces using just her mind and her voice.

She looked like Steve’s _mother_.

He wanted Nancy to love him enough that she’d never turn her verbal tirades on _him_ the way he’d come to expect from both of his parents. Because he’d been holding onto the fact that one day, he’d move out of his parents’ house. 

If he moved right back into one with his soulmate, how was he supposed to endure that for _decades_? How was anyone supposed to endure it that long?

So yeah, Steve was nervous. 

He parked the car and picked up the flowers he’d bought for her. He almost chickened out, but told himself, “Okay, Steve. You can do this. It’s gonna be great.”

“And… now I’m talking to myself.” 

He sighed and put a smile on his face, getting out of the car and jogging to the front door, like he could win a race against the urge to back off and run away.

The house was a fairly typical looking one, fairly plain in its look, but decently big. That was good. Steve’s parents would be relieved his soulmate wasn’t from the sort of family who might start asking for “loans,” like his Aunt Mindy’s husband, Bruce. 

Steve rang the bell and waited for someone to come answer the door. He heard a few muffled shouts back and forth, and eventually a tall man in glasses and a collared shirt answered it. “Yes?”

“Hi,” he said, assuming that this was Nancy’s father. He seemed almost _slow_ in a way Nancy definitely wasn’t. “I’m Steve. I’m picking up Nancy?”

“Huh,” he said.

That was _it_? _Huh_? 

Then Mr. Wheeler called out over his shoulder, “Nancy! A boy named Steve is here!”

Rapid footsteps approached and Steve was expecting to see Nancy. Instead, a woman who had to have been her mother appeared in the doorway. “Steve!” she said, elbowing her husband out of the way and offering Steve her hand to shake. “It’s so nice to meet you! I’m Karen Wheeler, and this is Ted.”

Steve shook Karen’s hand, and then Ted’s when Karen gave him a look until he held out his hand. “Um, nice to meet you, too,” he said, going into the house when Karen ushered him in. “You have a nice house.”

“Thank you, Steve, that’s nice of you to say,” she said, and Steve found himself set down on the couch in the living room just off the foyer. “So, Nancy said that your parents are both doctors. You must get to learn a lot of medical jargon at the dinner table.”

Feeling his face get kinda hot and wishing Nancy would show up so he could get out of here, Steve said, “Only sometimes. My dad’s a plastic surgeon, so he doesn’t really talk much about his cases.” Steve didn’t mention the fact that three days a week he worked at a hospital in Indianapolis, and more often than not he stayed the night there. The other two days, he worked at Hawkins Memorial with Steve’s mom. 

“Ah, privacy issues?” Karen asked, looking up when Nancy finally made her appearance. 

She was wearing a red dress that kind of made her look like her skin was glowing. It was pretty conservative in the style, but it suited her, Steve thought. He stood up, saying, “Hi, Nancy.”

“Hi,” she replied, with a smile and a little blush on her cheeks. God, she was so adorable. Steve was so lucky to have her as his soulmate. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah,” Steve told her. Still wanting to make a good impression, he turned back to Nancy’s parents and said, “It was nice to meet you.”

“You too, Steve.” Karen followed them to the door, seeing them off. 

Steve went to the car and held Nancy's door open for her, saying, “Your parents seem nice.” 

“They can be,” Nancy told him, a little bit of attitude in her voice. 

“Yeah, I know how that goes.” Steve gave a knowing nod.

He closed her door and then went around to his side, getting in the driver’s seat. Turning to Nancy before he started the car, Steve asked, “Italian or Chinese? I got reservations at both.”

Nancy laughed, and suddenly Steve felt really dumb. What was he doing? They were teenagers. He should have been taking her to a diner or something. “Sorry. I just thought... Where do you want to go?”

“Hey,” Nancy said in a gentle voice, putting her hand on Steve’s arm. “I didn’t mean… I was just _surprised_. It’s sweet that you got reservations at both.”

“Really?” Steve asked, though he got the impression that Nancy wasn’t the kind of person who told white lies to keep the peace. Not in student government, anyway. 

Nancy nodded. “I like both places. What do you feel like having?”

Steve wasn’t sure a girl he’d gone out with had ever asked him that before. “Italian,” he said, grinning over at Nancy. 

“Let’s go have Italian!” Nancy said, making it an enthusiastic rallying cry.

Steve grinned and nodded. "Okay, Miss Wheeler. Italian it is."

Jonathan didn't get the job at the hardware store. He had to take the job at the movie theater. Sometimes he got some satisfaction for kicking out patrons who kept making out after the movie was over. Mostly he just had to sell tickets and popcorn to people out on date after date after date. 

He tried his best not to touch any of the patrons, at least not skin-to-skin. They didn't give him funny looks for wearing gloves when he was handing over hot dogs or popcorn, but they did when he wore them while taking cash. If his manager noticed, she didn't say anything, so Jonathan kept on doing it. After all, the fewer people he touched, the less likely he'd find his soulmate, and the less likely he was to accidentally kill them.

Just like the rest of the school, Jonathan heard about it when Nancy Wheeler and Steve Harrington found each other out as soulmates. Within a week of the rumor spreading around the school, they were inseparable. The first time Jonathan saw them at the movie theater, he got Eric to cover the ticket booth for him, pretending to be sick.

With them, it wasn't that he was afraid to touch either of them. After all, they were already each other's soulmate, which meant they weren't his. No, this was plain and simple jealousy. Jonathan had watched Nancy from afar, had spoken to her a time or two when their brothers' friendship put them in close proximity. There was something about Nancy that Jonathan _wanted_ , but now he for sure knew he couldn't have.

And of all people, why did it have to be Steve Harrington? He was a clown, always making people laugh, never taking anything seriously. He only got away with it because he was so pretty. 

So, maybe when Jonathan saw the two of them coming into his movie theater, wrapped around each other and smiling, obviously happy to be on a date together, he actually got _physically_ ill with jealousy. It wasn't the first time his emotions had affected him so viscerally, and it wouldn't be the last. 

When he washed his mouth out and went back to the concession stand, Eric asked, "You okay, man?"

Jonathan didn't see Nancy or Steve anywhere. He nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm good."

He couldn't afford to go home sick, even if he wanted to.

Two mornings later, it was Monday, and Jonathan woke up late, not having slept well. He told himself to pull it together. That this was _life_ and he had to make the best of it, but still, his sleep had been fractured and left him wanting more when the alarm clock buzzed. His routine was all off, so by the time Joyce came out of her room, Jonathan was almost done making breakfast, but he had yet to wake up his brother.

Shit, they were going to be so late for school!

"He's not in there," Joyce said, coming out of Will's room, back to the kitchen. "Jonathan, your brother's not in his room."

Jonathan's stomach sank, and he felt like he was going to be sick again. "I don't…"

"Did he come home last night?"

Hot tears pricked at the edges of Jonathan's eyes. He'd been so caught up in his own bullshit, in envy and bitterness, that he hadn't even checked on his brother when he'd gotten home last night. Jonathan had to look his mom in the eye and say, "I don't know."

"Why not?" she demanded, and Jonathan knew she didn't mean it the way Lonnie used to mean it, but it still made his heart race and his bones go cold. "Where were you?"

"W-working," Jonathan told her. "I was at work. I got home late, so I went straight to bed."

Joyce looked at him for a long moment. "What were you thinking? You know I don't want you working when I have to work late!"

"I'm sorry!" Jonathan told her. "I thought we needed the cash!"

Joyce pressed her lips together, probably remembering the moment the week before where she'd complained to Jonathan about all the bills they couldn't pay. So yeah, maybe this was partly Jonathan's fault, but maybe it _was hers too_.

Without addressing the issue, Joyce turned and picked up the phone.

"Come on, Barb," Nancy said, leading her friend through the school hallway. "It's going to be so much fun. And you _never_ spend time with me and Steve."

"What can I say?" Barb replied, opening her locker. "I think your soul has bad taste."

Nancy snorted and rolled her eyes, a slight smile on her lips. "Please? You know with Mike's friend running away or whatever that my mom is going to be super uptight about me going anywhere by myself. Especially _on my bike_."

"So get Steve to pick you up," Barb told Nancy, closing her locker again and leading the way down the hallway to Nancy's locker. 

Nancy slowed down before they got there, biting her lip. When Barb turned around to face her, Nancy said, "Steve's dad took away the keys to his car again."

"So this is more about a favor _you_ need," Barb pointed out.

God, this conversation was not going the way Nancy needed it to go. "No. It's not about the ride. It's about having some fun with my best friend at my soulmate's party. That's it!"

After a long moment of looking into Nancy's eyes, Barb asked, "It's not going to be some sort of kegger, is it? If I get caught at a party the cops raid, my parents will _kill_ me."

Shrugging as she opened her locker and switched her books, Nancy said, "No, of course not. Steve said it was going to be really chill. Just a few people."

"Watch, it'll be like an orgy or something," Barb said, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

Nancy laughed and said, "Maybe you'll find your soulmate, then. All that skin-on-skin?"

"Nancy!" Barb cried in a scandalized voice, but she was giggling too. 

Jonathan knew that he was, at least in part, responsible for Will's disappearance. At least for the fact that they didn't know he was missing for a whole night. Because of that, he couldn't help but go to the place where Hopper found Will's bike and start looking for clues. He didn't know what he might find that Hopper and his officers hadn't, but Jonathan _knew_ Will, probably better than anyone else. That had to count for something.

Jonathan brought his camera, taking pictures of everything he thought could be a clue. He could develop them at school in the morning, see if maybe he could piece together something that he wasn't seeing here, in the moment.

If Will was in these woods the night before last, what had it been like for him? Why had he left his bike behind? Had he crashed? Had he been hurt? 

Had someone tried to hurt him?

Every little sound made Jonathan jump, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. What if Will was still out here? What if Jonathan ran across his _body_? The thought made Jonathan's heart clench in his chest, but he didn't let himself give up the search. Will was counting on him. Will was always counting on him. It was Jonathan's responsibility to find him.

Suddenly, a scream tore through the forest. Jonathan held his breath, not quite sure where the scream had come from, since it echoed through the forest.

The sound filled the air again, making Jonathan's blood run cold.

With a better idea of where the scream had come from, Jonathan started moving. What if it was someone else being hurt? What if it was the same person who'd taken Will? What if that person could lead him back to Will?

Jonathan saw lights from houses up ahead, and the screams sounded like they were coming from the one with the brightest lights. As Jonathan got closer, he realized that the screams weren't ones of terror, but ones of laughter. There were some kids, splashing around in a pool. As Jonathan took a few steps closer, just to be sure everything was alright, he noticed _who_ the kids were.

Nancy Wheeler was there with Steve Harrington, her soulmate. The other two were Tommy H. and Carol, kids who'd also found each other as soulmates early in life. Both couples were together and having fun and happy.

Jonathan wondered what that might feel like. Turning off the flash and slowing down the shutter speed, Jonathan took a picture. He didn't know why he stood there, watching them play in the water without letting them know he was there. He supposed that's what he always did at school, watched everyone else be happy, knowing he couldn't ever have that. Not the way he wanted.

After a couple minutes, someone complained about being cold. Yeah, no shit, they were cold. It was fifty fucking degrees out. The four teenagers pulled themselves out of the pool and went into the house. Jonathan was about to leave, when he noticed one of the upstairs lights turn on. The blinds were open, so Jonathan could see into the room, and he stood there, transfixed, when Nancy came to the window. He hoped his soulmate wasn't someone like her. She was too pretty and too smart to deserve death at his marking touch. Not that anyone deserved that. No one deserved to be Jonathan's soulmate, and Jonathan wondered if that meant he didn't deserve to have a soulmate either.

Like he could take a piece of Nancy home with him, as a consolation prize, Jonathan lifted his camera and took her picture. He only noticed as he lowered the camera that she'd taken off her shirt and was standing at the window in her bra. A surge of regret coiled around Jonathan's stomach. He shouldn't have done that. What was he thinking?

He almost turned away again, but then he heard the back door open. Wondering if someone had spotted him from inside the house, Jonathan stepped further back into the woods, somewhat behind a tree. But it wasn't Steve Harrington who came out of the house, or even Tommy H. It was Barb Holland. She looked desperately lonely, and in that moment, Jonathan felt a kinship with her. Here she was at a party where everyone else already had their soulmate, and she was alone.

When she sat down on the pool's diving board, dangling her feet down into the water below, Jonathan saw an image he _needed_ to capture. He lifted his camera to his face and pressed the shutter button, holding as still as he could as the shutter clicked open and held for a long second before closing again. He had no idea whether or not there was enough light for that exposure time to give him a usable picture, but maybe it was better that way.

After all, he hadn't asked Barb if he could take _her_ picture, either.

He tried to advance the film, to take another picture with an even longer shutter speed, but he'd reached the end of the roll. As he changed over to a new roll of film, the lights up at the house flickered. There had been weird power surges ever since the storm the night before, so Jonathan didn't think anything of it. When he finished replacing the film and looked up, Barb was gone. 

Maybe she finally wised up and left the party where all the other people were 'mated and she was alone. Jonathan did the same.

Nancy was standing next to Steve's locker, waiting for him to grab his books when she saw Jonathan over at the bulletin board in the hallway. She’d heard about Will’s disappearance, and she couldn’t help but feel for what he must be going through. 

She told Steve, “I’ll be right back,” and went over to Jonathan’s standing beside him for a moment. 

“I’m sorry,” she told Jonathan, who flinched a little, like she’d surprised him. “About your brother. It sucks.”

_Jesus, Nancy! Get a grip! “It sucks??” You couldn’t come up with anything better?_

“Yeah,” Jonathan said, giving Nancy a long, intense sort of look. 

“Have the police found anything yet?”

“Just his bike,” Jonathan told her. He seemed embarrassed about something, but Nancy couldn’t figure out what. 

“I hope they find him soon,” Nancy said, watching as Steve came over to them. 

“Hey, babe,” Steve said, putting his hand on the small of her back. “It’s time for class.”

“Yeah,” Nancy said, giving Jonathan a regretful wave goodbye. As she and Steve walked, Nancy realized something. “Have you seen Barb this morning?”

“No,” Steve said with a nonchalant shrug. “Haven’t seen her since she left the party last night.”

“What if she didn’t make it home?” Nancy asked.

Steve said, “I’m sure she’s fine. It’ll be okay.”

By lunch time, Nancy had begun to get really worried. Barb still wasn’t at school. Where the hell was she, then?

Nancy sat with Steve and his friends, and was still kind of poking at her sandwich when Nicole joined the table and said, “You’ll never guess what I saw in the darkroom today.”

“A cockroach?” Tommy asked, stealing a fry off Steve’s tray. 

“No,” she said, leaning closer to Nancy. “He took a picture of you through a window. With your shirt off.”

“What?” Nancy asked, feeling her face heat up with embarrassment. “When could he have taken it? I always keep my curtains closed!”

“Looked kinda like Steve’s house,” Nicole said. “There were pictures of you guys in the pool. Remember that pool party you hosted last summer?” She asked Steve. 

“What the fuck?” Steve asked, standing up and looking around, but he didn’t seem to see Jonathan, because he sat back down. “I can’t let that creep get away with taking pictures like that! Especially not of my soulmate!”

Nancy felt horrible. She shouldn’t have undressed in front of the window like that! She knew better! But Jonathan shouldn’t have taken those pictures either. She couldn’t believe he’d do something like that. He’d always been so quiet and nice. How _could_ he?

After school, Tommy came up to where Steve was waiting for Nancy to get her things, and said, “Byers’ car is in the parking lot. He’s here.”

“Oh, it’s on,” Steve said, leaving Nancy’s side and hurrying toward the door. Nancy followed him, wondering what he was going to do. She didn’t want him getting in trouble. She didn’t want him to hurt Jonathan either. Not for just taking some pictures. Confront him and get an apology, maybe, but not hurt him.

Nancy followed the others out of the school, hurrying to catch up with Steve and the others. They all ended up leaning against Jonathan's car, waiting for him. While they waited, Nancy caught Steve by the arm and said to him quietly, "Please, don't hurt him."

Steve met her eyes for a long moment, but then he nodded. "I won't lay a finger on him," he said, and there was something about the way he said it that made Nancy nervous. Before she could ask what he was thinking, Steve jumped down from the back of Jonathan's car and said, "Well, speak of the devil."

"What's this?" Jonathan asked, approaching the group cautiously, like he could tell they were up to no good.

"Nicole here told us a story about the kind of pictures you've been taking," Steve said, just as Tommy swiped Jonathan's bag from his shoulder. 

When Jonathan tried to grab it back from him, Tommy held a hand against his chest and passed the bag back to Steve, who took it over to the trunk of the car and opened it.

"What's this?" Steve asked, in a flat tone like he already knew what he was going to find. He held up a picture, and when Nancy got close, she was mortified to find it was the picture of her in Steve's window that Nicole told them about earlier.

Jonathan opened his mouth, but then he met Nancy's eyes and no words came out. Not even an apology!

Flipping through the rest of the pictures, Steve shook his head. "Why? Why would you take these, man? What were you thinking?"

Jonathan looked at them silently, and Nancy could see in him some sort of emotion brimming under the surface. She wasn't quite sure if it was sadness, or anger, or shame. Was he ashamed of having taken them? Or was he ashamed at being caught?

Without getting an answer to his question, Steve took the stack of photos and ripped them in half, then ripped them in half again. Nancy thought Jonathan looked a little more pissed and a little less shameful at that.

"Maybe you couldn't help yourself?" Steve asked, and Nancy got a very bad feeling about what was about to happen. Steve took the camera out of Jonathan's bag. "Maybe we need to help you out. Take away the tool that allowed you to do this?"

"No, not the camera!" Jonathan cried, and the anguish on his face was more than Nancy could take. 

She moved in, taking the camera from Steve. 

"Nance!" he complained, but something about the expression she gave him made him back off.

Holding the camera by the strap, Nancy held it out to Jonathan. "Don't do it again."

"I _won't_ ," he insisted, taking the camera gently from her. "I'm sorry. I didn't--"

Tommy scoffed. "You're too soft on him, Wheeler! I say we should punch his face in. Otherwise, how is he supposed to learn his lesson?"

Looking at the miserable expression on Jonathan's face, Nancy told the others, "I think he's learned his lesson." She took the photographs, then held Jonathan's bag out to him as well. "You'll destroy the negatives, right?"

"Right," Jonathan said, taking his bag from her. "In fact," he reached in and pulled out a film canister. "Here. Take them." He tossed the canister toward Steve, who caught it, before pushing past everyone and getting in his car.

Nancy said to the others, "Come on. We're done here."

It wasn't until Steve followed her that the others followed him. Once they were all clear, Jonathan started his car and pulled out of the parking lot. Nancy wasn't quite sure why she watched him go.

She didn't look at the photographs again until she was back home, emptying her school bag so she could get started on her homework. There was one photograph of her in her bra. Upset all over again, Nancy got a pair of scissors from her desk and cut the picture into tiny little pieces. She was about to do the same to the others when she saw Barb in one of the photos. 

She was sitting on the diving board over Steve's pool, looking down at the water. It must have been taken after Nancy told Barb to go home. She looked so sad. She looked downright _miserable_ , and Nancy knew it was because of her. 

But…

What had happened to Barb after this photo was taken? Had Jonathan been the last person to see her before she disappeared? Looking closer at the picture, Nancy noticed a figure standing behind Barb. She couldn't make out who it was. If Nancy was right about when this picture was taken, everyone else had been in the house. The figure couldn't be Steve, and she was fairly certain it was too tall to be Tommy.

Who the hell was it?

Nancy closed her eyes and sighed. She knew what she had to do. She had to talk to Jonathan about what he'd seen that night. She had to get his help so she could find Barb.

Jonathan had looked everywhere he could think of, but he still couldn't find his brother. He didn't have those photos he'd taken in the woods anymore, or the negatives, but at least he had his camera. He thought about going back to the woods, trying to find the trail again, but it got dark and he knew he wasn't going to see much.

As he drove down the long gravel driveway to the house, Jonathan saw a figure running toward him. He stopped the car, and the figure ran close enough to be illuminated in the headlights. He put the car in park and got out.

"Jonathan!" Joyce cried, throwing her arms around him and hugging him tightly. "There was something-- Something in the _wall_! It looked like a man, but without a face!"

"Without a face?" he asked, but she was hysterical and not making any sense. "Mom! Let's get you into the house. We'll figure it out from there."

"We can't…" Joyce said, shaking her head. "No, we can't go back there. It's not safe."

Jonathan was about to argue with her, when he saw the red and blue shine of lights against the trees on either side of the driveway. Turning around, he saw at least one cop car coming down the driveway, maybe more. 

_Shit_.

Jonathan had to hear the worst news of his life and instead of having a mother to turn to, he had to hold her up, be the strong one for her.

Will was dead.

They had to identify his body in the morning.

Jonathan had to be the one to call Lonnie and leave a message on his answering machine.

Everything was wrong, and everything hurt, and Jonathan didn't know how to get through this, especially not when his mother was insisting Hopper was wrong and that wasn't Will, and it made Jonathan feel more alone than he'd been in his entire life.

And he'd made being alone into an art form.

The body in the morgue was Will's.

A funeral had to be planned.

Joyce wouldn't do it, which meant it was left up to Jonathan, like everything else.

He supposed it was fitting punishment for taking that shift when he knew he was supposed to be home, looking out for his little brother.

Halfway through looking at the caskets, and knowing that they couldn't really afford _any_ of them, Jonathan looked up and Nancy Wheeler was there. "Can I talk to you? For a second?"

Grateful for the distraction from _all of this_ , Jonathan nodded. "Yeah."

He and Nancy sat on a bench in the funeral home and she took a photograph out of her bag. Jonathan recognized it as one of the ones he'd taken and he prepared himself to be yelled at again. Instead, Nancy held it out and said, "I think you were the last person to see Barb before she disappeared."

She handed him the photograph, so Jonathan took it. He told Nancy, "This was the last exposure on the roll. I looked down to switch it out and when I looked back up, she was gone." Jonathan shook his head and gave the photo back to Nancy. "Sorry. I figured she left or something."

"But what about this?" Nancy said, pointing to what looked like a smudge at the edge of the photo.

Jonathan squinted at it for a moment before shrugging. "It looks like it could be some sort of perspective distortion, but I wasn't using the wide angle. I don't know. It's weird."

"And you're sure you didn't see anyone else out there?" Nancy asked him.

Knowing Nancy just wanted answers and that he didn't have any, Jonathan insisted, "No. She was there one second, and then gone."

Nancy nodded and it looked like she was trying not to cry.

"I figured she bolted," Jonathan told her, like that would make her feel better.

Nancy sighed. "The cops think she ran away, but they don't know Barb." After a pause, she added, "And I went back to Steve's. I thought I saw something. Some… weird man or… I don't know what it was."

Jonathan wanted to help her. He did, but she wasn't making any sense. Kind of like his mother hadn't made much sense the night before.

"Sorry, I shouldn't be here," Nancy said, standing up. "I shouldn't have come here today. I'm sorry."

Feeling anxious that there was _some_ connection and he was about to miss out on making it, Jonathan quickly asked her, "What did he look like?" When she gave him a confused look, Jonathan clarified. "This man you saw in the woods? What did he look like?"

"I don't know," Nancy said, stammering, her brows drawn together with confusion. "It was almost like… he didn't--"

"Didn't have a face?" Jonathan asked, and the expression on Nancy's face told him everything he needed to know.

He was right. There was a connection.

The man in the wall was _real_. What if that meant everything else his mother said was real too? What if she was _right_ about Will still being alive, about that not being his body?

But what if she was wrong, and it was Will's body? What if he was dead, and that _thing_ was responsible?

Jonathan explained to Nancy what his mother had said, but ultimately he had to tell her, "I have to-- Well, I have to make sure there's a funeral tomorrow. But afterward…" Jonathan shrugged. "We could take that negative to the darkroom. I might be able to blow up that part of the picture."

Nancy nodded. "Okay. I left it at home, but I'll go get it. Meet you at the school?"

"Yeah," he agreed.

The entire time Nancy had been in the darkroom with Jonathan, he'd shied away from her, never letting her get too close. She'd seen him do it before, too. All the time at school. She'd thought it was just a strange thing about him, but in the darkroom it seemed very deliberate. She realized after she'd gone home for the night that the only people she'd ever seen him actually touch were his brother and his mom. 

Two people who one-hundred percent _couldn't_ be his soulmate.

The only conclusion Nancy could make was that he didn't _want_ a soulmate. 

Why not?

Nancy got ready for Will Byers' funeral, putting on the black dress her mother picked out and thinking the whole time that this funeral might be fake. The body might be _fake_. She had seen the photograph of Barb after Jonathan enlarged it. The faceless man was real, maybe he had taken Will and Barb to the same place. Maybe they were _both_ still alive.

As the funeral started to break up, Nancy went over to Jonathan. She asked him, "What do you think we should do?"

"We should look through those woods," Jonathan told her, taking a piece of paper out of his pocket. He unfolded it, revealing a map onto which he'd drawn three red Xes. "See? Everything has happened in this area. My house, Steve's house, all within a mile."

He still kept his distance from her, though not as adamantly as he had the evening before. Then he stole his father's gun and Nancy realized that she didn't know Jonathan Byers at all.

After changing clothes, making excuses to Steve why she couldn't go out with him like she did every Friday night, and retrieving her bat, Nancy met Jonathan in the field next to the woods. He was shooting at a row of cans lined up on a fence, and as far as Nancy could tell, he hadn't hit a single one.

She called out to him, "You're supposed to hit the cans, right?"

He looked over, and there was a hint of a smile on his face. "No, actually, you see the space between the cans? I'm aiming for those."

Wow. An actual joke. Nancy smiled and said, "Ah."

He explained that it had been a long time since he'd shot a gun, when his father took him hunting. When Nancy expressed disgust, Jonathan said, "I guess he and my mom loved each other at some point, but I wasn't around for that part. He found his soulmate when I was ten."

"I don't think my parents ever loved each other," Nancy said with a shrug.

"No?" Jonathan asked, putting more bullets into the gun. "They must have gotten married for some reason."

Shrugging, Nancy told him, "My mom's soulmate died in Vietnam. My dad was older, had a cushy job, money, came from a good family. I guess she wanted security."

"You wanna try?" Jonathan asked Nancy, holding out the gun. Nancy noticed the way he very carefully didn't touch her fingers as she took it.

"I have a soulmate, you know," Nancy told him, taking the gun and aiming at the cans on the fence. "You don't have to be so paranoid about touching me."

"You...noticed," he said, looking away and rubbing at the back of his neck self-consciously. 

"I notice a lot of things," she told him, aiming the gun and squeezing the trigger. The can flew off the fence. Feeling proud of herself, Nancy smiled over at Jonathan, and found him smiling back. The way he looked at her seemed a little bit like the way Steve looked at her, and suddenly she felt sorry that she'd already found Steve. She asked him, "Why don't you want a soulmate?"

Jonathan's smile faded. He turned and said, "Come on. Let's go find this thing."

Nancy dropped the subject, feeling disappointed that she'd gone and ruined the moment with such a personal question. "Yeah, okay."

She held her tongue, at least until she couldn't stand it anymore. "Is it that you don't want to be tied down to a soulmate yet? Because _that_ I understand."

"No, it's…" Jonathan said with a huff. He turned and walked away for a bit, until a minute later when he slowed down and let her catch up with him. "Is that… is that how _you_ feel?"

"No!" Nancy insisted, but then she thought about it again, and realized maybe she _did_ feel that way. "I don't know. Maybe. I'm not even sixteen yet. I want to get out of this place, but with Steve…" She sighed and shook her head. "It's like he _belongs_ here."

"And you don't," Jonathan figured, stepping over a little stream. 

Nancy had to stretch her legs kind of far to keep from getting her boots wet. She told Jonathan, "I don't know. Not yet, anyway. I can't imagine wanting _kids_ and a _house_ and all that stuff."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Jonathan told her. Then he shrugged and said, "I guess there would be worse soulmates to have that Steve Harrington."

With a laugh, Nancy admitted, "That's true. He's a good guy. If we do have kids, they'll be _very_ pretty."

Jonathan rolled his eyes and looked away, but Nancy was pretty sure he was smiling.

She couldn't help but ask him, "Are you afraid your soulmate is going to be just a _horrible_ person?"

"No," Jonathan said, actually chuckling that time. "If they were a horrible person, they wouldn't be my soulmate."

"Ah, you think so now," Nancy said, waving her finger at him. "But no one really knows how souls get matched together. Just that there's the bonding touch, and you get matching marks."

"My luck, I'd get a mark shaped like a pile of shit or something," Jonathan said.

Nancy couldn't help but laugh. "No, you wouldn't!" She took off her watch and pushed up her sleeve, showing her mark to Jonathan. "See? They don't really look like anything."

Jonathan sighed, but he looked over at Nancy's wrist anyway. Then he took a step closer before telling her, "Yours looks like a heart. Yeah, you and Steve are definitely going to settle down in the suburbs and have a gaggle of very pretty children."

Nancy scoffed, but she could tell she was smiling, too. "Just to spite you, I won't have any children at all. So there!"

Jonathan knew it was a mistake spending time with Nancy Wheeler. He liked her entirely too much and she belonged to someone else. She wasn't his soulmate. She couldn't be. That thought made his heart hurt almost as much as the thought that his brother could be dead and buried in the cemetery. He was hoping his mother was right and Will was still alive somewhere, but there was a big part of his mind that insisted it couldn't be true.

Will was dead.

Nancy wasn't his soulmate.

Jonathan needed to move on.

The sun had gone down already and Jonathan was close to asking Nancy if she wanted to call off the search for the night, to try and look again tomorrow. He turned to her and opened his mouth, but she spoke first.

"Do you hear that?"

"What?" Jonathan asked, but he stopped walking and stood still, listening.

A soft whimper met his ears and Jonathan turned toward the noise at the same time Nancy did. He met her eyes, and then nodded, following her toward it. Their flashlights danced across the leaf-covered forest floor as they got closer and closer to the sound.

Then Jonathan's flashlight found something furred and bloody. As he moved the light over it, he realized it was a deer.

Nancy made a pained noise and knelt down next to it, saying, "It's been hit by a car."

Jonathan noticed the way her flashlight lingered on its injuries. She reached out and touched an unmarred patch of fur, like it was easy for her to connect by just _touching_. 

Jonathan shuddered.

"We can't just leave it." She looked down at the gun in her hand. After starting to aim it at the deer, she faltered, and Jonathan couldn't let her suffer like that.

Holding out his hand, he said, "I'll do it."

She nodded and handed him the gun, the tips of her fingers brushing his palm as she did. The feel of skin against his was almost shocking, but Jonathan told himself it was going to be fine. Like Nancy said, she already had a soulmate. He couldn't hurt her that way.

Taking the gun, he stood up and aimed it at the deer's heart, hoping that would shorten its suffering. He tried to make himself do it, to prove that he wasn't a little kid anymore, but his wrist itched and the gun was heavy, and he really, really didn't want to shoot the deer.

With a loud rustle of leaves, the deer was _yanked_ away under a bush.

Jonathan jumped back, his heart beating in a terrified rhythm. "What was that?"

Without really agreeing to aloud, they followed the trail of blood the deer's body had left on the ground. Jonathan knew this meant they were getting closer and closer to the monster. Still, this was the only way they were going to find Will and Barb. Jonathan knew that.

And then the trail came to an end.

"Do you see any more blood?" Jonathan asked, looking around desperately.

"No." Nancy started searching in the opposite direction, and it was only a minute later when Jonathan realized he couldn't hear her footsteps anymore.

"Nancy?" he called out, backtracking toward where he'd left her. "Nancy!"

Then he heard a scream.

Shit! The monster had gotten her! How could he have been so stupid to let her out of his sight like that?

Running toward the sound, Jonathan found Nancy's backpack and the baseball bat, but not her flashlight. Not her.

"Nancy!" he called out, terrified he was about to lose the one person he'd let get even the slightest bit close to him. "Nancy, where are you?"

_He'd touched her_.

This was _his_ fault. 

No, it couldn't be the curse. She already had a soulmate. This was something else. _It had to be_.

"Nancy!"

"Jonathan!" she cried back, and her voice seemed to be coming from the base of a large tree.

He called back desperately. "Nancy!"

"Jonathan, where are you?" Then she screamed again.

No, no, no!

"Nancy, follow the sound of my voice!"

He ducked down next to the tree, shining his flashlight at what looked like the rotten base of it. The hole in the tree was slimy and covered with weird _tissue_ , but there was a blood trail entering it. He assumed Nancy must have followed the trail in.

But where did it go? And was the opening starting to close?

"Nancy! Nancy!"

Something erupted out of the tree, and Jonathan jumped back, startled. A second later, he got his flashlight aimed at it, and he realized it was Nancy's hand!

Desperate to get her back, to save her, Jonathan grabbed onto Nancy's arm and pulled. She grasped onto him tightly, pulling as well, but the opening in the tree was starting to close, and she was all but stuck. Jonathan pulled, and pulled, and Nancy's grip went slack, but eventually he got her shoulders through. The rest of her body came with, and Jonathan pulled her clear, watching horrified as the hole sealed up, like it had never been there in the first place.

"Are you okay?" he asked, but Nancy was limp in his arms.

She didn't respond.

"No, no, no," he cried out, scrambling to lay Nancy out on the forest floor. Her eyes were closed and he couldn't feel her breath against his cheek. He put his ear to her chest, but he couldn't hear her heartbeat either. "No!"

He'd taken a CPR class at his mother's behest when he started babysitting Will, and Jonathan tried _desperately_ to remember what he needed to do. 

_Chest compressions._ Doing chest compressions was the most important thing.

Jonathan found the right place on her chest and pressed down. The way her chest just gave in under the weight behind his hands made Jonathan shudder, his eyes tearing up, but he did it again. And again. He tried to count, but he kept losing track, but it felt like time, so he pinched Nancy’s nose and breathed air into her lungs. 

He started compressions again. 

His wrist burned.

Maybe Nancy had been wrong. She wasn’t Steve’s soulmate, but Jonathan’s. And she was dying.

This was how he lost his soulmate. This was how it happened. In the same week he lost his brother. 

Nancy gasped, her eyes springing open.

“Oh, thank god,” Jonathan sighed, taking one of Nancy’s hands and holding it to his chest as she finished coming around. 

She coughed a few times and laid there, breathing, wonderfully, terribly alive.

Maybe Jonathan was wrong. 

Nancy wasn’t his soulmate after all, she was just too brave for her own good.

Nancy didn’t remember the first few minutes after Jonathan saved her. She just remembered lying on the forest floor, looking up at the dark, cloudy sky, her chest aching.

Jonathan has her hand in his, holding it close to his chest. Something warm and wet fell onto her skin. Oh. He was crying.

“What…?” she tried to say, her mouth not cooperating. “Wha’ happened?”

Jonathan cleared his throat and it took him a good few moments before he told her, “You died.”

Nancy made a questioning noise. “But…?”

“CPR,” Jonathan told her. 

“Oh.”

Nancy thought about this for a moment, wondering if that was why her chest hurt so much. “How?”

“The…” Jonathan scoffed a little. “The tree was closing on you. I didn’t get you out fast enough. You stopped breathing.”

Tree? Oh, right. The hole she’d gone through. “I found the monster.” Nancy looked over at Jonathan. She couldn’t really see his face in the dark. “You saved me.”

She felt Jonathan nod and press his mouth to her hand, almost like a kiss. “I thought I might have killed you.”

Confused, Nancy told him, “No. I was the one who went into… You didn’t kill me, Jonathan. I did this to myself.” Groaning in pain, she got herself sitting up. “Why would you think this was your fault?”

“No, I was just being…” He let go of her hand. “We should get you out of the cold.”

He picked up the gun from the ground, unloaded it, then put it in his bag. He stuck the bat in Nancy’s backpack before putting it on his back. Then he handed her the remaining flashlight. “Hold that?”

“Sure,” Nancy said, “what are you do–”

Jonathan put one arm under her legs and the other around her back, lifting her up.

“Oh!” she said in surprise. She knew she wasn’t a very big person, but she wouldn’t have assumed Jonathan was this strong. She put one arm around the back of Jonathan’s neck, holding on. She used the other to light the path back toward the field where they’d met.

After a while, Nancy told Jonathan, “I think I feel well enough to walk.”

“You almost died,” he said, and didn’t put her down.

She put her head against his shoulder and thought he felt like safety. Eventually, they got back to Jonathan’s car. He put her in the passenger seat, then put her bike in the trunk of his car.

As they drove back into town, Nancy noticed Jonathan scratching the inside of his left wrist. It made her think about her soulmark. He’d touched her for the first time today. But Nancy already had a soulmate. She couldn’t have two, right?

When they got back to her house, Nancy let Jonathan help her to the door. Looking at the steps up to her room, she asked Jonathan, “Would you...?”

“Yeah,” he replied, seeming to know what she needed. He brought her upstairs and into her room, sitting her on the bed. “I should…”

“Stay?” she asked him, catching his left hand and rubbing her thumb across his palm. 

Jonathan sighed, closing his eyes like he was savoring the touch. 

Nancy turned his palm to the ceiling and pushed back his sleeve. There, on his skin, was a mark that matched hers. 

Nancy trailed her fingers over it, thinking it looked just like Steve’s.

Jonathan all but whimpered, falling to his knees in front of her. “It can’t be,” he said, looking up at her with a pained expression. 

“But it is.” Nancy cupped his face in her hands and kissed him. It felt just as meaningful and right as it ever had with Steve. 

Jonathan kissed her back, but with restraint, like he didn’t want her to know he was starving for affection. 

She didn’t push him, but simply asked, “Stay with me? Tonight?”

Jonathan nodded. “Okay.”

Steve knew Nancy was going through some stuff, between having to go to a funeral for that kid who drowned in the quarry and not knowing what had happened to her best friend. Still, he wanted to be there for her. Like a good soulmate.

Around eleven, he got in his car and drove over to her house. Like he’d done a few times before, he crawled up the side of the garage and went to Nancy’s window. He almost knocked, but then he realized Nancy wasn’t alone in her room. 

Some other guy was with her!

Some other guy was in _his_ soulmate’s room, kissing her.

That guy was Jonathan Byers!

What the fuck?

How could Nancy do this to him? She knew that as soon as they’d compared marks, Steve had devoted himself to her. Entirely. 

He’d thought Nancy had done the same, but apparently he was wrong. His first instinct was to pound on the glass, to make Nancy own up to what she was doing. He held himself back, though, afraid of just how angry he felt. 

So he left. 

He went back to his car and drove home and then took a long, cold shower until he wasn’t so mad anymore, just confused. 

The question he kept coming around to was, “Why?”

Why was Nancy throwing everything they had away? Had Steve done something wrong? Had he done something to make her think he didn’t care about her? Was she acting out because of Barb?

Maybe they needed to take a break for a while. 

But for how long? And what would it look like when they got back together? How was he supposed to trust Nancy again? And if he tried to confront her about it? She'd be stubborn about it, wouldn't she? Just like she'd been stubborn about insisting something bad had happened to Barb.

By Saturday afternoon, Steve was still struggling with these questions, and had no answers. He picked up the phone at least six times, intending on calling Nancy, but each time he chickened out and set the phone back down again.

Then he decided there was only one thing he _could_ do. He had to go to Jonathan and convince him not to see Nancy anymore. He'd listen to reason, wouldn't he?

It took Steve a while to find the right phone book, and from there Byers' address. Then, when he went looking for the address, it was impossible to find. He ended up pulling into the gas station to ask for directions. The cashier made him buy a county map, but then she found the address for him and helped him write down the directions from there.

It was dark by the time Steve pulled up to the tiny one-story house, but the lights were on inside. Steve almost turned back, but no. This was about Nancy, about the most important person he'd ever have in his entire life. He couldn't just let this go, or back down, or run away. He had to stay and convince Jonathan to leave Nancy alone.

There were no other options.

He got out of his car and went to the front door.

The night after she died, Nancy curled up in bed with Jonathan and tried not to let the shadows in the corners of her room scare her too much. She looked at Jonathan in the dim light from her desk lamp and asked him, "Why are you being so…?"

She didn't even know how to describe how incongruous his gentle, caring demeanor was from the shy, standoffish boy she'd known before. 

"Do you think I'm wrong?" she asked. "That I'm not your soulmate?"

Jonathan sighed, looking up at the ceiling. He said, "I didn't have a mark until today, but you did. And…"

When he didn't continue, Nancy prompted, "And what?"

"You'll say it's stupid," he said, turning to her and giving her a little smile. 

Smiling back, Nancy asked him, "What's stupid?"

"I'm cursed."

"Cursed?" Nancy couldn't help but laugh.

A thoughtful frown on his face, Jonathan looked away, saying, "Or, at least I _was_." He gave Nancy a small glance before moving closer to her and saying, "When I was a baby, a fortune teller told my mom that minutes after I touched my soulmate for the first time, they would die."

"Holy shit, really?" Nancy asked him, almost sure that he was making it up as a joke.

Jonathan nodded. "My dad always said it was bullshit, but my mom…? She believed. She made _me_ believe."

Taking a sharp breath, Nancy realized, "That's why you never touch anyone! You were afraid of what would happen."

With a slow nod, Jonathan said, "Yeah. And I guess there was a curse. The first time I touched my soulmate, fifteen minutes later, she was dead."

"But you brought me back," Nancy said, touching his face and pulling him into a soft kiss. 

When she let him go, he looked into her eyes and asked, "What about Steve?"

"I…" Nancy realized she'd been very carefully _not_ thinking about Steve. "I didn't have my mark until he touched me. I know it."

"So, he's your soulmate too," Jonathan said. "How is that supposed to work?"

Shaking her head, Nancy said, "I don't know. Maybe I met Steve so early because I wasn't supposed to survive. I was never meant to get out of this town alive."

"So, he was only supposed to have you for a little while? And then he was supposed to spend the rest of his life alone? That's…"

"That _sucks_." Nancy took Jonathan's wrist in her hands again, brushing her thumb over his mark. "It looks _just_ like his."

"Maybe we're supposed to _share_ you somehow?" Jonathan suggested. "Half the time you're with him, half the time you're with me?"

"Maybe," Nancy said, thinking this over. "Half time is better than no time, if I'd actually died."

"I can't imagine you're looking forward to telling him." Jonathan shook his head. Then he sat up. "No, this isn't it. He had you first, I wasn't supposed to have a soulmate at all. I'll--"

Unable to bear the thought of Jonathan leaving at that moment, Nancy struggled to sit up too, wrapping her arms around Jonathan. "No. I can't lose you! I can't... " The thought of losing Steve gave Nancy a similar pause. How was she supposed to choose? She couldn't.

"Stay," she told him, bumping her nose against his jaw. "Let's save the soulmate decisions for _after_ we find Will and Barb."

Nodding, Jonathan said, "Okay. Okay."

Jonathan stayed with Nancy all night, and though they did get a little sleep, they also made a plan. They were going to lure that monster, and _kill_ it. Maybe then they would get their missing loved ones back. In the morning, after buying as many useful items as they could at the army supply store, they went back to Jonathan's house and started to plan.

Midday, Jonathan's mom came home. “Oh, Nancy! Here you are!” Joyce said, closing the door again behind her. “Everyone is looking for you and your brother!”

“Why?” Nancy asked, and when the door opened again, Jonathan put himself between the intruder and Nancy.

It turned out to be Chief Hopper. 

They found Mike and his friends, including Eleven. With the help of a kiddie pool full of salt water, Eleven found Will. She didn't find Barb. Jonathan followed Nancy into the hallway outside the middle school gym.

Sitting beside her, Jonathan said, "I'm sorry. She didn't deserve it."

"No, she didn't," Nancy agreed, leaning her head against Jonathan's shoulder.

Jonathan figured they could stay put here, like Hopper told them to, but he had a feeling Nancy would get restless before long. He asked her, "What do you want to do?"

Her jaw set as she looked over at him, Nancy said, "I want to kill it. I want to finish what we started."

Jonathan had a bad feeling that they'd cheated death the day before and it was about to come for them again, but he couldn't let his mom go into that other place just to get taken by the monster too. So, he drove Nancy back to his house and they finished setting the trap for the monster.

After slicing open their hands and bleeding onto the floor for a minute, Jonathan realized, "We'll have another set of matching marks."

"Look at that," Nancy said, her fingertips brushing over his skin as she bandaged his wound. She looked up at him and smiled. 

Jonathan would be lying if he said he wasn't feeling overwhelmed.

He opened his mouth to tell her that, when there was a loud knock at the door. 

Who the hell would knock on _his_ door on a Saturday evening? 

"Jonathan?" said the visitor, and Jonathan saw Nancy's eyes go wide. "Hey, Jonathan? I just want to talk."

"Is that Steve?" Jonathan asked, and Nancy nodded.

She sprang to her feet and opened the door.

"Nancy? What are you…" Jonathan heard Steve's sigh. "Look, whatever's going on, I want to fix it, okay?"

How had he found her here? The only people who knew wouldn't have told Steve, if he could have found them at the Middle School on a Saturday. Was this some sort of soulmate bond thing that no one had ever told Jonathan about?

"You need to leave," Nancy told Steve, like that was going to work. 

The lights strung up all around the living room blinked once. Dread ran down Jonathan's spine.

"Nancy, no. I don't care what you did, with Jonathan or whoever. I _want_ to make this work." The lights flashed again. Jonathan got to his feet, picking up his bat from the floor. "I _need_ to make this work. You're my _soulmate_."

"I know, I know," Nancy told him, and she sounded like her heart was breaking as she tried to push him away. "We'll talk about it later. But right now you need to leave!"

"Please?" Steve begged, but then he asked, "What happened to your hand? DId he do that to you?"

Steve pushed his way into the house. The lights blinked a few more times and Jonathan called out, "Nancy! The lights."

"Oh, shit," she said, putting her back close to Jonathan as they scanned the room for any other signs of the monster. The lights blinked faster and faster, and then Jonathan saw the ceiling begin to stretch and warp.

"There!" he cried, pointing to it.

Nancy shot the gun.

Steve screamed something from behind them, but Jonathan was too busy watching the monster rip its way through spacetime as Nancy shot it. Then he realized that if they didn't move, it was for sure going to get one of them. 

"Nancy, come on!" he cried, grabbing her around the waist and making sure she was the first one down the hallway. Steve stood, eyes wide, watching in horror as the monster entered their world. Knowing he couldn't just leave Steve to get eaten, Jonathan grabbed him by the hand. "Come on!" When they got to the bear trap, Jonathan warned him, "Jump!" 

Steve did. He followed them into Will's room and Jonathan closed the door behind him. Completely hysterical, he shouted, "Jesus! Jesus, what the hell was that? What was that?"

"Shut up!" Jonathan cried at him, speaking in unison with Nancy. 

He put his spiked bat down on the bed, taking the lighter out of his pocket and getting ready. The monster sounded like it was getting closer and closer. As he held up the lighter in his left hand, he noticed the way the skin under his watch itched again, like it had the day before.

After the lights stopped blinking, Nancy asked him, "Do you hear anything?"

"No," Jonathan told her, waiting a few more seconds before closing the lighter. He picked up his bat and listened at the door. Nothing. 

When he opened the door, the hallway was empty. The monster was gone.

Finding Nancy at the Byers house was unexpected, though Steve thought he probably should have realized it was a possibility. After all, Nancy hadn't called him at all, which wasn't like her on a usual Saturday night. She was here. Probably kissing Byers again. Maybe doing more than that. But Steve tried to keep a lid on his anger. He _tried_ , but then he noticed Nancy's hand was bandaged and bleeding.

"Did he do that to you?" Steve demanded, pushing his way into the house.

It didn't look much like a house on the inside, even less so when something broke through the ceiling. Whatever it was, it was big, and it was completely alien-looking. Jonathan pulled him away from it, barely giving Steve enough of a warning before he had to jump over _something_ on the floor.

And then… nothing happened. 

Steve followed Jonathan and Nancy back into the hallway. That _thing_ was gone.

Unable to process what he’d just seen, Steve muttered, “This is crazy! This is crazy!” Over and over again while he tried to think of what to do. He needed to… call for help! Yeah, call for help! Steve saw a phone in the kitchen, so he went for it. 

Before he could even dial the nine, Nancy ripped the phone out of his hand, saying, “It’s going to come back!” The look she gave him was merciless as she said, “So you need to leave. Right. Now.”

Steve _wanted_ to leave. Hell yeah, he wanted to leave. But Nancy was his _soulmate_. He wasn’t about to leave her to get eaten by that… that thing! “No! I’m not leaving you! I’m about to piss my pants, I’m so terrified, and I know you kissed Jonathan, but that doesn’t even matter now. I cannot leave you here! Not going to happen.”

Nancy gave Steve a confused, but almost fond look. That meant he was getting through to her. He was just about to suggest that they _all_ get out of the house with the creepy Christmas lights and the gigantic monster that came out of the walls.

Then the lights blinked a couple times, and Jonathan said, “It’s coming!”

“Shit!” Steve wanted to grab Nancy, and get her out of there, but she was already back-to-back with Jonathan in the center of the room. He looked around for any sort of weapon he could find.

The best he could do was a candlestick from the dining room table. As he turned around, he realized that the monster was climbing up out of some sort of hole in the floor. What the actual fuck?

Before he could warn them, it attacked Jonathan, knocking him down and sitting on his chest. The bat clattered out of his hands, and he was helpless underneath it. Nancy shot it again and again, while Steve got around next to her and picked up the bat.

As soon as Nancy ran out of bullets, Steve stepped in and swung at the monster. It backed up!

Steve realized if he moved around it a bit and changed its trajectory, he could get it into the trap. Four or five good hits later, the monster got a swipe in at him, its claws slicing into his right leg. Steve ignored the injury, hitting the monster three more times until he heard a loud click. “That’s it! He’s in the trap!”

“Jonathan, light it!”

Jonathan lit his lighter and threw it at the monster, igniting the gasoline soaked into the carpet. 

Suddenly feeling woozy, Steve took a few steps back from the blaze. He sat down hard, and realized that his leg was bleeding _really_ badly. And then he was flat on his back, listening to the whoosh of the fire extinguisher, his vision going dark.

“Steve?” Nancy asked, dropping to the ground next to him and grabbing his hand. “Steve! No, no, no! That’s too much blood!”

He tried to apologize. He and Nancy were supposed to have their whole lives together. _Decades_ , not months. But Steve couldn’t get his mouth to move.

Jonathan took a few seconds to come to terms with the fact that although they’d hurt the monster, it looked like they hadn’t killed it. He hoped they’d bought his mother and Chief Hopper enough time. 

Then from behind him, Nancy cried out, “Steve! No, no, no! That’s too much blood!”

Turning around, Jonathan saw Nancy pressing on Steve’s thigh. He hurried over and saw just _so_ much blood, he barely knew where to start. Well, keeping Steve from bleeding out had to be first. Jonathan knew that much at least. He took his belt off, and then with Nancy’s help, got it around Steve’s upper thigh.

After tightening it as best he could, he went to the phone to call an ambulance. 

Except the phone wasn’t there. Where? Shit, where had it gone?

“Nancy? The phone?” 

“Oh, god,” she cried, tears rolling down her cheeks. She took one bright red hand off Steve’s thigh and pointed to a corner of the living room. “That way, I think?”

Jonathan went in the direction she pointed and found the receiver. He plugged it in and called for help. He had no idea how they were going to explain any of this, but Steve’s life was more important than possibly getting in trouble. Jonathan knew that much. 

As they waited for the ambulance, Jonathan got some kitchen towels and brought them to Nancy, helping her press them to Steve’s wound. “It’s slowed down, I think,” he told her, hoping it was because his tourniquet had worked and not because Steve was running out of blood.

Nancy nodded. 

She placed a kiss on Steve’s forehead and then kept her head against his as she spoke. “You touched him, didn’t you?”

Thinking back, Jonathan almost said no, but then he remembered grabbing Steve’s hand and pulling him toward the hallway. He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Yeah.” 

The silence that stretched between them was quiet enough that Jonathan could hear the way Steve's breaths became labored. Keeping one hand on Steve's wound, Jonathan used his other to grab Steve's limp hand. All of Jonathan's jealousy over Steve and Nancy finding each other suddenly made sense. Somehow, incredibly, he had _two_ soulmates. His soul had known he was supposed to be with them too. That was why it hurt so much, seeing them together all the time. And maybe he hadn't killed Nancy, but it was looking more and more like the curse had been about Steve all along. 

He was going to die.

It was Jonathan's fault.

Leaning closer to Steve, Jonathan whispered in his ear. "Come on, man. You've got to pull through. Please. I didn't mean to do this to you. I have no idea how things worked out this way, but please. You can't leave. I just found you."

Jonathan figured Steve probably couldn't hear him. Not after all the blood he'd lost. Still, something in him wanted to try. He kissed Steve's cheek and said, "Please, come on. Don't do this to Nancy. She's never going to forgive me if you die."

"It's not your fault," Nancy said, looking up as the sound of sirens approached. Looking back at Jonathan, Nancy told him, "If anything, I'm just as much at fault as you are."

Jonathan wanted to argue, but Nancy pressed a kiss to Steve's lips and then stood up. She opened the door and ran out, yelling, "Over here! Come on!" A minute later, she came back, followed by two paramedics.

"He's lost a lot of blood," Jonathan said, keeping the pressure on Steve's leg. "I used my belt to slow down the bleeding."

"Okay, great. Let us take it from here," said the first paramedic.

Jonathan stepped back, his hands sticky with drying blood. Nancy ran into him, throwing her arms around his waist and burying her head in Jonathan's chest. He used his bloody hands to hold her close, but he couldn't look away from Steve. Who knew how many more moments he had to look at his soulmate while Steve was still alive?

As they got Steve onto the stretcher, the second paramedic asked, "How did this happen?"

"Um," Jonathan said, looking down at Nancy. He hadn't thought that far ahead. What were they supposed to say?

Nancy turned toward the paramedic and told him, "Animal attack. There was a cougar in the house. We scared it away, but not before…"

"Right," the paramedic said, giving Nancy a strange look.

Jonathan figured that was still better than the look they might have been given if they'd told the truth.

After the paramedics got Steve loaded into the ambulance, Jonathan told Nancy, "We should get cleaned up, then we'll go to the hospital too."

She nodded, tears still streaming down her cheeks. As they entered the house, Nancy said, "I hoped we helped your mom and Hopper. If we did all this, went through all this, for _nothing_ …?"

"Yeah," Jonathan said, heading for the kitchen sink. 

When Steve woke up, he was in a hospital bed. Everything hurt, especially his right leg. He tried to reach for it, but there was something tugging at his right hand. Oh. There was a tube and a needle taped to the back of his hand. Because he was in the hospital.

As he woke up further, he began to remember _why_ he was there.

Jonathan and Nancy had lured some sort of _alien_ to Jonathan's house? And Steve had fought it?

Why had he done that?

Oh, right. It would have hurt Nancy if he hadn't. Yeah, better him here in the hospital than her.

Like he often did when he thought about Nancy, Steve looked down at the mark on the inside of his wrist. It… 

It looked _different_ than it had before. The borders were a little smoother, one end tapered more, while the others were more rounded. Soulmarks weren't supposed to change like that, were they? Maybe he was just hallucinating. What sort of drugs did they have him on, anyway?

Footsteps approached, and his mother rounded the edge of the curtain around his bed, a paper coffee cup in her hands. "Oh, good," she said, smiling but not overly enthusiastic, "you're awake."

"What happened?" Steve asked, wondering what sort of story Jonathan and Nancy would have told.

"Apparently," she said, sitting in the chair beside him, "a cougar attacked Nancy, and you fought it off."

Nodding, because that made a lot of sense, Steve asked her, "What did they do to my leg?

"The surgery was fairly short," she told him. "Just an hour or so. Most of that time was dealing with the volumetric shock. The trauma surgery was fairly straightforward, but they tell me they had to defibrillate you more than once. Still, they think they were able to preserve most of the muscle tissue in your leg, though only time will tell."

_Most_? That wasn't all. Was his leg going to be fucked up now? "Will I be able to use it?"

"Time will tell," his mother repeated with a smile and a pat on his wrist.

Steve hated that habit of his mother's. She never wanted to get his hopes up, but what she thought was encouraging, never actually was. Looking down at the wrist she patted, Steve asked, "Where's Nancy?"

"Out in the waiting room," she said. "With another boy. They seem a bit close, if you know what I mean."

Oh, right. Jonathan. Whatever. There was time for that discussion later.

"Can you ask Nancy to come in? I have to see her. I have to know she's okay."

Steve's mother didn't look _entirely_ happy about his request, but she stood up and said, "Of course. I'll send her in."

After she left, Steve realized his mother never said she was glad he survived.

A minute later, Nancy rushed in. "Oh!" she cried, coming up to him and putting a hand on his face. "You have no idea how happy I am to see you awake."

Smiling back at her, Steve said, "C'mere," and pulled Nancy into a tight hug. While his face was still pressed against her neck, he said, "Is it the pain drugs, or did we fight some sort of monster?"

Nancy laughed. "Yeah. We did."

"Why?" 

Nancy drew back, but she sat gingerly on the edge of his bed, keeping her hand around the back of Steve's neck. After a few seconds, she said, "We were a diversion. Because of us, they were able to bring Will Byers back from the place where he was trapped."

Steve nodded. "Okay, yeah. That's good."

He wondered what kissing Jonathan Byers had to do with anything. Curious, Steve took the hand Nancy had around his neck and brought it in front of him, gently turning it over so he could see her mark. "Yours is different, too," he realized, running his thumb over it. "I don't get it."

Nancy turned Steve's hand palm up and put her wrist next to his. "They're still identical. We still belong together."

Steve breathed for a few seconds, but eventually he had to say, "I saw you kissing Jonathan."

"I know," she told him, hanging her head. "I'm… I should have talked to you about it first."

"But, _why_?"

"I'm…" Then Nancy took a sharp breath and stood up. "I'm going to show you why." 

Steve didn't know what to think. "What could you possibly show me that could explain…?"

"I'll be right back," she said, leaving his room. 

Great. Steve was in the hospital. From what his mom said, he'd almost died, and might have a really messed up leg. His soulmate was going around kissing other guys. And apparently she needed to show him something that would miraculously make him not mad at her.

Yeah, right.

When Nancy came back, she was pulling Jonathan by the hand. "Uh, hey," Jonathan said, lifting his free hand in a subtle wave. "Good to see you're awake."

"You sure about that?" Steve asked, about to ask if he wouldn't rather Steve had died. That would have made Nancy single, perfect for swooping in on.

But Nancy pulled Jonathan close to the side of the bed and turned his left wrist up, so Steve could see it.

There, on the inside of Jonathan's wrist, was a mark just like Steve's. Just like Nancy's.

"What?" Steve asked, looking up at Jonathan, then over at Nancy.

Nancy explained, "Jonathan's our soulmate, too."

"Ours?" Steve asked. "Like _both_ of ours? How? And I mean, Jonathan and I have never--" He cut himself off when he realized that Jonathan had grabbed his hand when the monster first showed up. "How can three people be soulmates? That doesn't make any sense."

"Neither do curses, but here we are, in the hospital," Jonathan said.

Steve didn't know what being in the hospital had to do with curses. "What curse?" he asked.

"Mine," Jonathan told him, scratching at the back of his neck like he was self-conscious. “A fortune teller told my mom that my soulmate would die shortly after our Bonding touch.”

“But I’m not dead,” Steve said, looking over at Nancy, like he wanted her to explain. 

Nancy told him, “Your heart stopped during your surgery. The doctors had to give you a lot of blood and a bunch of medicines to get it going again.”

“So… I died.”

Jonathan and Nancy both nodded. 

Pointing at Nancy, Steve asked, “And somehow Jonathan is your soulmate, but you’re not dead.”

“My heart stopped,” she told him, rubbing at her chest. She looked over at Jonathan, and said, “He did CPR and got it going again.”

“No,” Steve said, reaching for Nancy and pulling her closer. “You almost died?”

“But I didn’t,” she assured him. “Jonathan made sure I didn’t.” Kissing Steve, she said, “He tied his belt around your leg, making sure you didn’t die either.”

Steve had no idea how to feel toward Jonathan. He and Nancy had both almost died because of Jonathan’s curse. But Jonathan saved both of them, too. He’d kissed Steve’s soulmate, but he also _was_ Steve’s soulmate. 

Or, at least, that was what Nancy seemed to believe.

Steve reached for Jonathan, asking, “Can I see? Again?”

Nodding, Jonathan gave Steve his hand, wrist turned toward the ceiling. His skin was warm, and when Steve grazed his fingers over the soulmark there, Jonathan shuddered. Steve wasn’t unaffected by the sight. Before he found out Nancy was his soulmate, Steve had sometimes wondered if his would be a guy. And Jonathan was kind of pretty, when he wasn’t frowning. 

Maybe this would be okay.

Steve pressed a kiss to the mark, getting the same sort of thrill he did whenever he kissed Nancy’s. Jonathan shuddered again.

Steve smiled. Yeah, this would work.

While they were waiting for Steve and Will to both wake up, Nancy and Jonathan sat together in the waiting room, holding hands. If anyone noticed, they didn’t say anything. At least, not until Nancy’s parents arrived. Karen’s eyes landed on their entwined hands for just a second. 

It was ten minutes later when Karen said, “Nancy? May I have a word?”

Nancy nodded and followed her mother from the room. They walked a bit down the hall, before Karen pulled Nancy into a hug. She said, “I know this situation is scary. The prospect of losing your soulmate this young is very difficult. But I don’t think you should lead that young man on. Until the doctors make a pronouncement, you _have_ a soulmate.”

Figuring she meant Jonathan, Nancy told her mother, “I’m not leading Jonathan on. When I touched him yesterday, he got a soulmark. It looks just like mine and Steve’s.”

"That's…" Karen started to say, but she trailed off, like she'd remembered something. "Oh. Does Steve know?"

Nancy shook her head. "We didn't have a chance to tell him before…" Nancy pressed her lips together not quite sure she could sell the cougar line to her mother. 

"Okay, alright," Karen said with a sigh, pulling Nancy into a hug. "We'll figure everything out later."

Nancy wanted to ask her mother if she'd heard of something like this before, but she was too worried about Steve to actually ask. Karen was right. They'd figure everything out later.

It was another two hours before the surgery was done, and another three hours before Steve woke up. It was almost dawn, but when Nancy saw Steve sitting in his hospital bed with his eyes open, she was glad she'd chosen to stay.

After they explained everything to Steve and Jonathan had gone to check on his little brother again, Nancy laid in Steve's hospital bed with him, her head pillowed on his shoulder. She said, "I'm sorry I kissed him before talking to you about it. I shouldn't have done that."

Steve murmured in agreement. Then he said, "On the off chance we find _another_ soulmate, I call dibs on kissing them first."

Nancy laughed. "Yeah, okay, Steve. You get dibs."

After Will had woken up and then fallen back asleep again, Jonathan sat next to his mother, both of them silently watching Will as if they were afraid he'd disappear again. He propped his left elbow on the arm of his chair, putting his hand under his chin and resting like that, knowing he needed sleep, but unwilling to leave Will just yet.

Joyce sighed and leaned back in her chair, looking over at Jonathan. He didn't think anything of it until she asked, "What's that?"

"What's what?" he asked, until he realized she was looking at his mark. "Oh."

"Let me see! Let me see!" Joyce said, pulling Jonathan's wrist closer to her. 

It looked different than it had at first, before he'd touched Steve, with cleaner edges and a slightly darker tint. Jonathan hadn't been anticipating that. Then again, he hadn't been anticipating finding _two_ soulmates in the same week he almost lost his brother.

Her eyes wide, Joyce asked, "Who was it? What happened? Are they…?"

"Nancy," Jonathan told her, before saying, "I should thank you for making me take CPR lessons when I was twelve."

"Oh, Jesus." Joyce put a hand to her mouth, meeting Jonathan's eyes. "You had to…?"

Jonathan nodded. "She probably has some cracked ribs, but she won't see a doctor yet."

Shaking her head, Joyce said, "I'm so sorry. I wish I could've figured out why you were cursed. I wish that wouldn't have happened to Nancy."

Biting his lips, Jonathan nodded. He looked away, but he could still feel his mother's eyes on him.

"Why do I get the feeling that there's more to this story?"

With a sigh, Jonathan turned back toward his mother. "Because there is?"

"What?"

"You know Steve Harrington is here in the hospital too, right?"

Furrowing her brow, Joyce nodded. "Yes. Karen said she ran into his mother in the waiting room. You and Nancy were with him when he got hurt?"

Nodding, Jonathan told her, "He helped us fight that demogorgon thing. He saved us."

"But he got hurt?"

Looking up at his mother, Jonathan admitted, "He got hurt just a few minutes after I touched him for the first time."

"That's…" Joyce looked at him with confusion, her mouth slightly open like she wanted to say something, but couldn't think of what.

Showing her his wrist again, Jonathan told her, "He, Nancy, and I all have the same mark. We're all soulmates."

Joyce's lips twitched upward, and then she gave a soft laugh. "Here I've been so afraid your whole life that you'd have to go without a soulmate. Instead, you got two."

"Maybe it wasn't actually a curse," Jonathan suggested, laughing when his mother put her arms around him and hugged him tightly.

She kissed his cheek. "Maybe you're just tougher than some silly curse."

"Yeah. Maybe."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I'd love to hear what you think in the comments!
> 
> If you want to know more about me and my works, you can find me over [on tumblr](https://pterawaters.tumblr.com/) and [on pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/pterawaters).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for "Cursed"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27455218) by [wolfish_willow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfish_willow/pseuds/wolfish_willow)




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